FOOD REVIEW: Ray's Hell Burgers (Arlington, VA)

There has been much discussion lately about whether Five Guys or In-n-Out has the better burger. However, as I blogged about earlier, President Obama has switched his allegiance from Five Guys to Ray's Hell Burger. My position is that Five Guys is better than In-N-Out.

Recently I happened to be in Washington, DC for a business trip so I decided to check out Ray's Hell Burger, which also happens to be in Arlington, Virgina, a suburb of the District. It has a pretty distinctive menu with an interesting selection of quixotically named special burgers.

Pictured above is the "Soul Burger Number 1" which comes with a 10 ounce all-American beef patty, applewood smoked bacon, cognac and sherry sauteed mushrooms, grilled red onions with swiss cheese on a toasted brioche bun for $8.95. I replaced the cheese with Vermont White Cheddar. I also added small sweet potato fries for $1.75.

Although the burger is about three dollars more expensive than a Five Guys  burger and almost twice the cost of an In-N-Out burger it is well worth it. Like Five Guys, it is probably too big to eat at one sitting. The sides are incredible.The sauteed mushrooms  are amazing and the bacon and cheese were pretty incredible. Five Guys wins in the bun department (their buns are pleasantly dough-y and fresh, which I think goes better than toasting). Ray's fries are better than Five Guys but not as good as In-N-Out's.

Next time I'm in DC I will definitely check out Ray's again, but I will also grab a Five Guys burger to eat on the plane home.

Name: Ray's Hell Burger

Location: 1725 Wilson Blvd, Arlington, VA 22209. 

Contact: 703-841-0001.

AMBIANCE: B+.

SERVICE: B+.

VALUE: A.

FOOD: A.

OVERALL: A-.

Is Koo Koo Roo Dying?

One of my favorite chains of "fast food" in Los Angeles is Koo Koo Roo chicken. I was surprised recently to find out that there are basically only three franchises of the store remaining in Los Angeles: West Hollywood, Larchmont Village and Santa Monica. Pasadena and downtown Los Angeles have closed recently. I remember there used to be one in the Miracle Mile area of Wilshire Boulevard also.

Apparently the parent company of the grilled chicken joint was bought by Luby's this summer after the parent company Magic Brands (which also owns Fuddruckers burgers) filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection in April.

Koo Koo Roo has a prominent location in the "gay ghetto" in West Hollywood, but it seems like the gay boys have changed their allegiances to Tender Greens (which also only has 3 locations in Southern California).

Have you eaten at any of these chains? What do you think of them?

FOOD REVIEW: Five Guys Burgers

After hearing that Five Guys Burger was Barack Obama's favorite burger joint in D.C. the next time I was in town I checked it out. Apparently, Obama's new fave is Ray's Hell Burger (since that's were he took Russian President Dmitry Medvedev recently for a cheeseburger).

I have bad news for devotees of In-n-Out Burgers: I have found a better burger. The burgers at Five Guys are superior to the ones at In-n-Out although they are not as cheap. But I'd rather pay twice as much for a burger more than twice as good (and more than twice as filling).

Name: Five Guys Burgers
Location: 2300 Wilson Boulevard, Arlington, VA 22201.
Contact: 703-812-8440.

AMBIANCE: B-.
SERVICE: B+.
VALUE: A-.
FOOD: A.

OVERALL: A-.

FOOD REVIEW: Juicy's Restaurant (Los Angeles, CA)

Juicy's brown stew chicken and beef short ribs.

Readers of this blog will be aware of my longtime quest for the best Caribbean food in Los Angeles (for background, see here and here). During my quest a friend of mine took me to Juicy's Natural Restaurant near Washington and Arlington just North of the 10 freeway. I hadn't even heard of the place, so I was happy to try it out. Next door they have a West Indian grocery store for products that you may be missing from the islands.

Unfortunately, I was not very impressed with the food at Juicy's. One of my favorite aspects of West Indian food is the peas and rice, and Juicy's was simply overcooked to the point of being bland. The brown stew chicken should be intriguingly spicy (piquant, not picante) but theirs was not really distinctive in any way. See my review of Joan & Sisters for some good brown-stew chicken and rice and peas. Although that place does not qualify as a West Indian restaurant; they are a Belizean restaurant and an excellent one at that.

I'm actually not sure if Juicy's roti or not (one criteria for my quest for an excellent Caribbean/West Indian restaurant is that it should sell roti; another criteria would be having the drink sorrel on the menu).

If you are really craving some good Caribbean food I would recommend heading out to Leimert Park to check out Ackee Bamboo or stopping by the Beverly Center and experiencing Kassava.

Name: Juicy's Restaurant
Location: 3426 W Washington Blvd, Los Angeles, CA 90018.
Contact: (none).

AMBIANCE: B.
SERVICE: B+.
VALUE: A-.
FOOD: B-.

OVERALL: B.

FOOD REVIEW: Taste of Brazil (El Sereno)

interior

interior, another angle

rice and beans with fried yucca

chicken stroganoff

One of the joys of moving into a new neighborhood is slowly discovering the local eateries and other commercial establishments. The Brazilian eatery and grocery store Taste of Brazil immediately stood out from the other places in El Sereno with its huge green and yellow sign (and Brazilian flag).

Taste of Brazil serves as something of a cultural center for the Brazilian diaspora in Los Angeles while simultaneously serving up delicious, genuine Brazilian cuisine.

Name: Taste of Brazil.
Location: 4840 S Huntington Dr., Los Angeles, CA, 90032.
Contact: 323-342-9422.

AMBIANCE: B+.
SERVICE: B+.
VALUE: A-.
FOOD: A.

OVERALL: A-.

FOOD REVIEW: Brownstone Pizza (Eagle Rock)

MadProfessah discovered Brownstone Pizza (2108 Colorado Blvd. Eagle Rock, CA 90041. (323) 257-4992) a few months ago and have visited a few times but thought I would finally get serious about writing up a review. Brownstone Pizza is a fantastic neighborhood pizza joint. It is probably not the best pizza in Los Angeles, but it is definitely better than the horrendously over-hyped Casa Bianca Pizza which inexplicably gets declared repeatedly as "the best pizza in Los Angeles"! and is not even the best pizza in EAGLE ROCK!

Actually, Brownstone Pizza may not be the best pizza in Los Angeles either but it is pretty damned good. I have eaten at Brownstone on several occasions in the last several months, and ordered food to take-out. The pizza is excellent, especially if you like thin crusts with tangy sauce and fresh toppings. Their non-pizza items are worth mentioning as well, with meatballs the size of your fist in your choice of sauce [HINT: don't choose "butter"] added to your pasta of choice. The interior is small, but clean and more inviting than most New York City pizza joints, although it is curious there are not one but two flat screen TV's in a space smaller than a typical living room.

However, you don't need to make the schlep to Brownstone's for the ambiance, you're there for the pizza, and of some faux foodie friend of yours told you that Eagle Rock had the best pizza in town and you are daunted by the (inexplicable!) 45 minute wait to get into That Other Pizza Place saunter on down Colorado Boulevard to Brownstone's--you won't regret it.

Name: Brownstone Pizza. Location: 2108 Colorado Boulevard, Los Angeles, CA 90041. Contact: 323-257-4992.

AMBIANCE: B+.
SERVICE: B+.
VALUE: A-.
FOOD: A.

OVERALL: A-.

MOVIE REVIEW: Food, Inc.

Saw the movie Food, Inc. at the Regency Academy Theaters in Pasadena, my favorite second-run theater where matinee screenings cost $2 and all other shows are $3. For the first time I had to wait before going into the theater, because there was a significant line to get in to the theater, which I presumed was because they were also showing the new Star Trek film (see MadProfessah's review).

Food, Inc. is the most significant documentary that I have seen since two health care documentaries from 2007 called Salud and Michael Moore's Sicko.

Instead of health care, this year's amazing non-fiction film is about another of life's necessities: food.

Directed by Robert Kenner and featuring Michael Pollan and Eric Schlosser, two of the most influential talking heads on food issues in the public eye.

There are some hard to watch scenes in Food, Inc. as well as lots of very important information.

This movie will change the way you look at food, which will change the way you live your life. As with all important documentaries (and films, for that matter) the impact of spending time to watch Food, Inc. is felt for much longer durations than then event itself.

Running Time: 1 hour, 34 minutes. MPAA Rating: Rated PG for some thematic material and disturbing images.

OVERALL GRADE: A+.

ACTING: N/A.
IMAGERY: A+.
PLOT: A.
IMPACT: A+.

FOOD REVIEW: Derrick's Jamaican Cuisine

coconut shrimp


brown stew chicken

MadProfessah checked out Derrick's Jamaican Cuisine (6806 La Tijera Blvd. Los Angeles, CA, 90045; 310-641-7572) the other day and was pleasantly surprised.

As regular readers of the blog will know, I have a long standing quest to find authentic, cheap, good West Indian/Caribbean food in Los Angeles. So far, the best Caribbean food in Los Angeles County I have found is Ackee Bamboo in Leimert Park.

I had visited Derrick's a long time ago (before this blog started) and was not terribly impressed. However, this visit was different. I ordered the coconut shrimp as an appetizer, followed by the brown stew chicken (which is a traditional and very common West Indian dish).

The coconut shrimp was deliciously crunchy and was matched with a delicious sweet, spicy and tangy sauce for dipping. The brown stew chicken was also excellent, well-matched with rice and peas, fried plaintains and some pretty sad steamed vegetables. The brown stew chicken is not overwhelmingly spicy-hot (that would be the jerk chicken) but instead is filled with what seems like dozens of subtle spices that delight the senses. It is also perfectly cooked, moist and falling off the bone.

Derrick's is definitely a place to get decent Jamaican and Caribbean cuisine, with a fancier (and less authentic) ambiance than other sources of West Indian fare in Los Angeles, like the Caribbean Treehouse, Juicy's and Wi Jammin that MadProfessah has also sampled recently.

AMBIANCE: B+.
SERVICE: B+.
VALUE: B.
FOOD: A-.

OVERALL: B+.

REVIEW: Blair's (Silverlake, Los Angeles)

creamed corn, $9

Belgian Abbey Ale Donuts and Toffee Sauce, $9

Coconut White Chocolate Mousse Cake, $9

Special Entree: pasta with pearl tomatoes

Idaho Trout with a ginger, fava beans
and pear tomato ragout, $23

Yellow Fin Tuna tartar with cucumber, avocado
and a spiced ginger vinaigrette, $15

After having a forgettable experience at Blair's during a lunch over the summer I approached dinner with some trepidation last fall. However, I was pleasantly surprised by the uniformly excellent quality of the food on this visit, from the appetizers, to the side dishes and entrees and ending with a decadently delicious dessert.

MadProfessah started with the tuna tartare appetizer and had the creamed corn side along with the special pasta entree (which had mushrooms, pearl tomatoes, some kind of special sausage and cranberries, I believe). The Other Half had the Idaho Trout whihc he enjoyed immensely and then ordered donuts for dessert. My selection, coconut white chocolate mousse cake sounded good (I love cooconut, white chocolate and mousse!) but the donuts were surprisingly good, warm and soft and had a caramel dipping sauce. The word orgasmic comes to mind.

Anyway, overall Blair's was a great time and I look forward to eating there again soon. Along with Glendale's Palate Restaurant (see MadProfessah's review) it is great to have high-end excellent dining in north east Los Angeles.

OVERALL: A-.

AMBIANCE: B+.
SERVICE: A-.
VALUE: A-.
FOOD: A.

FOOD REVIEW: Bulan Thai (Silver Lake, Los Angeles)

4114 Santa Monica Blvd (at Sunset Blvd)

pad thai

"chicken" pineapple fried rice

"I can't believe it's not flesh!" I exclaimed as I bit into my pineapple chicken fried rice at Bulan Thai Vegetarian Kitchen (4114 Santa Monica Blvd, Los Angeles, CA 90029; 323-913-1488) in Silver Lake. My friend just nodded wisely and said "I told you so!" He had suggested we come here for a business lunch and I had been reluctant, since I am most definitely a carnivore.

"Do they have shrimp?" I asked.

"No, they are a completely vegetarian restaurant" he replied.

"Wow," I said. "Hardcore."

"But, believe me," he said, "you will think you are eating meat. It's
incredible."

"Mmmm, hmmmm." I murmured, disbelievingly.

My friend was right. Somehow the wizards in the kitchen at BulanThai are able to cook their tofu so that it has the taste, consistency and texture of chicken. TASTY chicken! It has to be experienced to be believed. He had the pad thai, that canonical Thai dish which is on every Thai restaurant's menu. It was also excellent. I am eager to come back and explore the rest of what Bulan Thai vegetarian restaurant has to offer! My friend says the "beef" is ridonculous. I can't wait.

OVERALL GRADE: A.

SERVICE: A.

VALUE: A-.

FOOD: A.

AMBIANCE: A.

FOOD REVIEW: The Diner (Adams Morgan, D.C.)

chicken salad (cheddar) melt with fries, $5.99

2453 18th Street, Adams Morgan

Yelp.com is just kicking butt! It led me to The Diner (2453 18th St NW, Washington, DC 20009; 202- 232-8800) last night for dinner. The Diner is apparently a Washington, D.C. institution: a 24-hour restaurant with excellent food. Shocker. Every city should have one. Sadly, in Los Angeles we are stuck with The Pantry. (Shudder.)

Anyway, Sunday at 11pm MadProfessah finally got around to eating dinner and was pleased to find The Diner was again a mere 10 minute walk from his hotel and about 1 minute away from Cashion's Eat Place where I ate brunch (see my review.)

The menu is pretty larger and fellow Yelpers had said that everything on the menu was good so I tried the chicken salad cheddar melt (on English muffins) with fries and the waitress suggested the lemonade. I also had a chocolate with peppermint creamcheese frosting cupcake (to go).

The chicken salad was a bit salty but it's actually a really good idea to do a melt on an English muffin and the cheese was deliciously melted. The fries were good, not great (i.e. not to the level of In-N-Out Burger) and the lemonade was very concentrated. The cupcake ended up sounding better than it actually tasted.

What stood out at The Diner was the service. Immediately upon walking in I was taken to a table of my choice, and my waitress was asking me for a beverage selection within 60 seconds of me taking my seat. She also came back twice to take my order because I took several minutes to make a selection. The food came out promptly. At one point I dropped my fork on the ground and within 5 seconds someone was at my elbow with a new fork. The ambiance is a bit loud but it is a very comfortable setting

I do think the food is not the main reason to eat at The Diner; that reason is the food is cheap, reasonably good and available 24 hours a day, seven days a week. I will try to eat here another time before I leave D.C. to maybe select a burger or something more substantial from the menu to see if they actually can produce outstanding (instead of merely very good) food.

OVERALL GRADE: A.

FOOD: A-.
SERVICE: A+.
VALUE: A.
AMBIANCE: A-.

FOOD REVIEW: Cashion's Eat Place (Adams Morgan, D.C.)

soft-scrambled eggs, applewood-smoked bacon,
sauteed breakfast potatoes, $10.

MadProfessah is in Washington, D.C. for the 2009 Joint Math Meetings and decided to have brunch at Cashion's Eat Place (1819 Columbia Rd NW, Washington DC 20009; 202-797-1819) on the basis of several posititve recommendations on yelp.com.

Thanks to my lovely Apple IPhone 3G I was able to discover that the restaurant was a mere 10 minute walk from my hotel and it was actually not very cold out at 1:30pm on a Sunday.

Cashion's has a very fancy interior (see pictures) that can be somewhat intimidating but the staff is very friendly and the service is excellent. Although many yelp-ers were commenting about the cornmeal waffles with pecan butter and cranberry sauce I was looking for something a bit more basic, so I ordered the eggs (soft scrambled with a touch of gruyere) which came with applewood smoked bacon (another item on the menu several people at yelp was worth the $4.95 as a side dish alone) and some freshly squeezed orange juice. Interestingly, the menu offered duck eggs for $2 more but my waitress had never tried them (!) and couldn't really give me any insight as to what I'd be getting for the $2 difference in price. (Note to wait staff at restaurants: you should always have tried everything on a menu, especially when it only contains less than 6 different items!) My choice came with the obligatory breakfast potatoes which I usually ignore.

Anyway, the food arrived promptly and was actually pretty fantastic, though I was somewhat disappointed with the bread that showed up on the table. It was some kind of thick-crusted country loaf cut into odd-shapes that was neither warm nor soft but oddly chewy/tough. The eggs and the bacon were absolutely amazing (perfectly cooked) and the freshly squeezed orange juice was nice and moderately sized for $4.95. The biggest surprise was the breakfast potatoes. Usually I hate breakfast potatoes because they are too hard and just bland but these were sauteed in butter and just the right size so that they were very flavorful bite-size morsels. I would definitely come back and try other things on Cashion's menu.

The whole thing is not cheap, costing $16 for essentially eggs with bacon and breakfast potatoes but it is excellent food and the ambiance is great. Hopefully the Dean will approve the expense since I did have to eat while I was on a business trip!

OVERALL GRADE: A-.

AMBIANCE: A+.
SERVICE: A.
VALUE: C.
FOOD: A+.

Read my Yelp review of Cashion's Eat Place.

FOOD REVIEW: Diner on Main (Alhambra, CA)

Katie's Steak Sandwich

MadProfessah and The Other Half ate lunch at Diner on Main St in Alhambra, California on Monday. It is a very interesting example of the retro-50s "Googie" style. MadProfessah had "Katie's steak sandwich" (with onion rings, since they were out of sweet potato fries) and The Other Half had the club sandwich.

The food was surprisingly good. I suspected I was in for a shock when the perky waitress asked how I wanted my steak cooked. Both sandwiches had surprising touches: his club included avocado (on sourdough toast) and my steak sandwiched had a deliciously piquant aioli mayonnaise.

The googie ambiance was appealing and well-maintained, although a bit out of step with the oldies Christmas music and flat-screen televisions with live football. The service was quite good and although the food was quite good, it wasn't overwhelmingly cheap ($10.95 for the steak sandwich, $8.95 for the club). The Other Half thought the onions rings, while extremely tasty, were a bit oilier than he prefers and there definitely was a not-insignificant amount of gristle in my sanndwich. All in all, I would definitely eat at The Diner on Main again, especially late at night (they are open to 2am on the weekends).

AMBIANCE: B+.
SERVICE: A-.
VALUE: B+.
FOOD: A.

Joys of Euro Pane

chocolate eclair

raspberry tart with custard filling

Here are two more reasons (besides the three reasons I had blogged about previously) to enjoy Euro Pane Bakery in Pasadena, California. Their chocolate eclair and the raspberry tart (with custard filling).

REVIEW: Euro Pane Bakery (Pasadena, CA)

Flourless chocolate cake

Bee sting

Almond cookie (left), chocolate chip with walnuts (right)

Euro Pane is an amazing bakery found in Pasadena (950 E Colorado Blvd, (626-577-1828) near the corner of Lake and Colorado Boulevards. It has truly delicious, European-style pastries. Sadly, the prices are pretty European also, but they are worth every centime!

MadProfessah samples their wares pretty frequently. Recently, I tried their flourless chocolate cake, bee sting, and some cookies. Everything was absolutely excellent. Europane is a great place to spend an hour or so on the weekend, basking in the lovely Southern California weather!

FOOD REVIEW: Palate Restaurant (Glendale, CA)

Mad Professah and The Other Half went to Palate Restauarant (818-662-9463, 933 South Brand Boulevard) a newly opened restaurant which has already received glowing buzz from The Los Angeles Times.

Here are some pictures of what we ate that night.

salmon rilette (l) and pickled zucchini
butter with amazing warm fresh bread.
cream of broccoli soup
heirloom tomato salad
skirt steak fillet with grilled lettuce
wild seabass with calamari and scallop
chocolate pudding
panna cotta with strawberry

The food was excellent and the service was attentive. The atmosphere at 7pm on a Thursday was a but noisy, and that was with the place not completely full. The 15 (20?) foot ceilings are impressive but are definitely not conducive to a quiet atmosphere. Of course, this is probably a conscious choice but I disapprove of eating in the presence of a din.

It's very exciting to have such a high-quality (and not overly expensive) in NELA (North East Los Angeles). The food was almost uniformly outstanding, with some exceptions. The cream of broccoli soup was a bit bland and the salmon rillette was so cold it was almost too hard to spread. Particularly excellent were the delightfully warm and fresh bread, the extremely tenderness of the beef, the subtle flavors in the fish dish and the overwhelmingly smoothness of the chocolate pudding.

A four course meal (appetizer, soup or salad, entree and dessert) for two (plus drinks) was under $100.

MadProfessah will be back!

AMBIANCE: B.
SERVICE: A-.
VALUE: A.
FOOD: A.

P.F. Chang Is NOT Chinese

Why do people eat at P.F. Chang's China Bistro? The "P.F." stands for Paul Fleming, who founded the chain in Scotsdale, AZ in 1993.

Fleming, a native of Louisiana who had worked in the oil business, entered the restaurant business in the early 1980s when the global oil glut devastated the petroleum industry in the Gulf of Mexico and sent Louisiana into a deep recession. He managed to gather together enough funds to open a franchise of New Orleans-based Ruth's Chris Steak House in Beverly Hills, California. Fleming had immediate success in a tough business. Eventually, he would acquire the franchise rights for Ruth's Chris Steak Houses in California, Arizona, and Hawaii, and he would also purchase other restaurant franchises, including four Z'Tejas Grills and one Nola's Mexican Restaurant. But it was not until he opened P.F. Chang's China Bistro in Scottsdale, Arizona, in 1993 that he began his own, rather unique chain. As president of Fleming Chinese Restaurants Inc., he started up and managed the first four restaurants in the fledgling enterprise. Fleming claimed that his principal motivation was his fondness for Chinese food, which he wanted to make available to all comers at reasonable prices in a less intimidating format than that of most Chinese restaurants.

As far as I'm concerned, P.F. Chang's is to chinese food what Taco Bell is to Mexican food. 'Nuff said.

REVIEW: The York (Highland Park, CA)

Pan-seared tilapia, Swiss chard, lentils with bacon ($15)

Cheddar burger, spicy harissa aioli, pickled onions, rocket, fries ($13)
Grilled salmon salad, peppercress, arugula, pignoli, citrus vinaigrette ($14)
Pulled pork Cuban sandwich, mustard aioli, gruyere, ham, pickle, slaw ($12)

The York on York Boulevard in Highland Park is a hip new bar and restaurant ("gastropub") which has been getting good reviews since it opened last year. Mad Professah stopped by the spot twice in the same week and was able to get a good sampling of the food and ambiance.

Specifically, I ordered the cheddar burger and fries while the Other Half ordered the tilapia. The fries are outstanding, with the burger cooked exactly right and placed on a very fresh bun with excellent trimmings. The tilapia was also quite good, with the slightly sour flavor of the chard and lentils forming an interesting counterpoint to the delicate but sweet fish. The food is surprisingly good for "bar food." I didn't personally taste the grilled salmon salad but I have reports that it was tasty. On my second visit to The York I ordered the pulled pork cuban sandwich, which is not bad, but I would prefer any of the cuban sandwiches at Porto's Bakery and Cafe (which also cost one-third the price).

The two different nights I went to the York I was impressed with the ambiance of the place. It has beautiful 20-foot ceilings with exposed rafters and very stylish lighting which provides just the right amount of ambient lighting. In addition, the music was interesting and not too loud. The clientele was an unusual (for Highland Park) mix of Eastside hipsters, college students and others.

OVERALL: B+/A-.

FOOD: A.
VALUE: B+.
SERVICE: B.
AMBIANCE: A-.